That ‘Get Out’ College Course Is Now Available to the Public

The four-time Oscar-nominatedGet Out is one of last year’s biggest hits, and its fascinating study of race relations in America has already immortalized it in the annals of both horror and comedy. Earlier last year, we heard that it had even inspired a UCLA course around the concept of the Sunken Place, and now, even if you don’t go to UCLA, you can take that course online.

io9 spoke to Professor Tananarive Due and her husband, writer Steven Barnes, who explained that the course got so popular and so much media attention — even before Jordan Peele himself crashed it — that they both decided to take the class to the internet in webinar form, where students from all over the place could also experience it and learn from it. It’s not affiliated with UCLA and started on January 18, but you can still sign up for “The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror” online at the website and catch up by watching previously recorded lectures. There aren’t any exams or graded essays, but you will be expected to keep up with the homework, which mostly consists of watching movies — from Candyman to Beloved to Night of the Living Dead — and reading short stories and essays.

“There are conversations that are happening now in 2018 concerning race that have never been happening in the history of this country, thanks to Get Out,” Barnes told io9. “There is an opening for artists right now. If you’re willing to speak a dangerous truth, and you’ve got the skill to do it right, there is real opportunity.”

Get Out offers an exploration of race and racism stemming from slavery and emancipation — largely referred to as America’s birth defect — that very few other pieces of media ever get close to. “What Get Out does,” Due said, “is allegorically document white supremacy and its effects on black Americans. It’s from slavery—metaphorically, you can look at that—Jordan Peele talked about the sunken place about being an interpretation of mass incarceration. But I think you can also extrapolate slavery. The theft of black bodies for labor. In this case, it was the theft of black bodies just to enhance their lives.”